Announcement of System Verification Opportunities for First GNIRS Modes

The Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS) is now installed in its
new home on the Gemini South telescope and commissioning activities have
begun. Therefore, we are happy to invite the Gemini community to propose
System Verification programs for a subset of the GNIRS modes. You are receiving
this because you are either Gemini staff, a member of the GNIRS instrument
team, or a member of a National Gemini Office. Collaborations within the
Gemini partner countries are highly encouraged as we have a limited number
of observing nights and cannot do a large number of projects. Proposals
submissions will be DUE no later than MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2004 (details
below).

System verification is the final step of testing prior to general use
of the instrument by the Gemini community. It is intended to be "end-to-end"
testing, verifying the readiness of the entire system from observation
definition to data reduction. It is also intended to exercise the various
modes of an instrument and demonstrate to the community, through interesting
and challenging science programs, the potential of the GNIRS instrument.
The following summary is extracted from the Gemini SV web page:

"SV observations will be selected by SV team members and approved by
the Gemini Director. They will span a wide range of targets and perspectives
and the SV teams will be responsible for providing written, in depth assessments
of SV observations and mode verification within two months of data acquisition.
The data obtained during SV will be made available by ftp to the international
Gemini community and the assessments will be published on the Gemini SV
web pages. Community participation...will help ensure that Gemini [with
GNIRS] is a success from the first date of scheduled observations."

As you may know, GNIRS is a complex instrument with several observing
modes including long slit spectroscopy from 1-5 microns with two pixel
scales and a range of spectral resolutions; cross-dispersed spectroscopy
from 1-2.5 microns; integral field unit spectroscopy and spectral polarimetry.
Initial commissioning will involve the long slit (single order) and cross-dispersed
modes with the "short" cameras, specifically:

This "call" for SV proposals concerns these modes only. Commissioning of
the IFU and the "long" camera modes (including R=18000) is planned for
later in 2004A and 2004B.

Approximately 7 nights in the first half of March have been scheduled
to conduct the SV observations. Programs will be selected to cover a variety
of targets, wavelengths AND observing conditions. While we are interested
in pushing GNIRS to its faintest limits, and we are hopeful for good weather
on Cerro Pachon in March, we also need projects that do *not* require 50%-tile
image quality and photometric skies. Programs for worse than average conditions
will be greatly appreciated and are more likely to be executed. In addition,
targets south of -30 degrees declination are easier to observe because
they are out of the prevailing northwest wind.

For the long-slit observations, we are interested in both point sources
and extended objects, thermal and non-thermal wavelengths and both the
moderate (R~2000) and high (R~6000) resolution modes available with the
short cameras.

For the cross-dispersed mode, only R~2000 observations will be considered.
Both point sources and extended objects may be proposed, however the slit
length in the cross-dispersed mode is approximately 6 arcsecs.

The pages will be updated as commissioning proceeds in January, so please
check back occasionally. The sensitivity tables currently give our best
pre-commissioning estimates. An Integration Time Calculator will be made
available on the web sometime in early January.

To submit a program, you must use the 2004A
Phase I tool and include observing constraints, target lists, and instrument
configuration information. Export the program to an xml file and EMAIL
THE XML FILE directly to brodgers@gemini.edu by MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2004.

Scientific justifications should be brief (1 page or less) and clearly
state which modes are being tested. Technical justifications should be
complete enough that feasibility can be assessed easily.

Early submissions will be appreciated. PIs will be informed of the results
of the selection process in early February 2004, and Phase II files (using
the Observing Tool) for selected programs will need to be returned by late
February. Note that the recently released "wimbledon" OT has a GNIRS component which we encourage you to try out in advance.

Disclaimer: Submitting a SV program or even having a SV program selected
as high priority does not guarantee that data will be taken. Selection
for SV will also be based on the abilities of the proposers to reduce the
data and return feedback within a reasonable time. The proprietary period
for SV data is two months. PIs and their collaborators will need to provide
reduced data for public release.

Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments-- we look
forward to hearing from you and reading your proposals!